Handle With Care by Shreya Sen-Handley

Author:Shreya Sen-Handley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

Disneyland, Paris

Never Never Land

Remember the first time you watched a Disney film? You stood in line for your ticket and then for popcorn, with barely contained excitement. Having made it into the hallowed hall, you were led like a traveller across mysterious terrain, by a wondrously sure-footed usher, picking out your seat with a glow-worm torch in that cavernous dark. Remember squirming with anticipation through the seemingly endless pre-film ads? When the main feature finally started, with stirring music and a luminescent castle that filled the vast screen, remember how you wished with all of your earnest five-year-old heart that you could be transported to that magical land?

Dreams do come true. Even the ones you have forgotten. One warm Parisian evening, more than three decades later, I found myself standing in front of the castle that had haunted my childhood dreams. Sleeping Beauty’s castle slumbered, its delicately pointed spires wrapped in the midnight-blue velvet of the night, as we positioned ourselves on a grassy knoll to watch the promised magic unfold. It was our last night at Disneyland Paris after a frenetic five days, and we had been assured a fitting finale at the park’s centrepiece. As I propped up my four- and six-year-olds so they could see better, my inner child scrambled out too.

With indrawn breath, we watched the most splendid son et lumière; luminous Disney characters fashioned from the interplay of light and occasional jets of water pranced and danced across the castle walls, as familiar songs rang out. The play of coloured lights on the castle kept changing so it looked brooding, then romantic and jolly, as the unfolding story took twists and thrilling turns. Peter Pan lost his rascally shadow, Aladdin took Jasmine on a magic carpet ride, and jovial Jiminy Cricket jigged from turret to turret with a cavalcade of other characters, before giving way to a magnificent fireworks display.

On our slow, contemplative walk back at the end of the show, which was also the end of our holiday, the children asked what I’d liked best. ‘Watching you two,’ I said quite honestly. Their incandescent happiness had made every spot of bother during the trip worthwhile. In truth, I had worn the same utterly captivated expression on my own face through most of it. For those five days, I had joyously, unapologetically, become five years old again. ‘What did you two enjoy most?’ I questioned in turn. All of it, they whooped. Every last bit. And that was what we’d travelled across the Channel for, why we’d spent a tidy sum to vacation in an amusement park (of all places, I’d said to myself in the run-up) instead of a spot of salubrious beauty.

Our Disneyland plan was hatched with another young family at a giant aquarium two years ago. Chickenpox, school admissions, and the detritus of day-to-day life meant it was a while before we found ourselves boarding an early morning train bound for Paris from St Pancras in London. For the children, the adventure began at the Channel crossing, with its thirty-eight-kilometre journey under the sea.

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